100% Whole Grain Rye with Rye Sprouts – YW & SD Combo Starter

and re-reading Andy’s (ananda) many posts on rye breads, we decided to see if yeast water levain, in conjunction with rye sour levain, could do a better job of lifting this heavy dough to new heights and provide a more open crumb.

We wanted to stay near the 85% hydration, 35% preferment, 100% whole rye grain that both these fine bakers use. We added home milled whole grains to this model. But, we do like rye sprouts, prunes and a combination of seeds; fennel, anise, coriander and caraway, that go so well in 100% whole rye breads to produce a more complex flavor and interesting crumb texture. No scald was used as Andy sometimes uses in his rye breads.

We also added some barley malt syrup and home made white and red (diastatic and non diastatic) malt to sweeten things up a tad and get some more enzymatic action working on the carbs turning them to sugars that the combo yeasts could use to make CO2 and hopefully more and bigger holes.

This was a lean toward Andy’s methods. We figured the sprout and prune addition would only make the rye even more difficult to lift to a more open crumb. We also decided to take the hydration up to over 92% to account for the fresh home milled thirsty flour. We added a 2 hour autolyse for the water, flour, salt and 3 malts. No retardation for this loaf for some reason but it's loss leaves another thing to try someday and see how the bread changes.

We decided to use Juergen’s baking temperature and schedule rather than Andy’s since we just didn’t have 6 ½ hours to bake low and slow as Andy does sometimes. Someday, we will use Andy’s bake temperature and time schedule, to see the differences it will surly make. We used Juergen’s uncovered baking method instead of Andy’s covered low and slow one.

The dough nearly doubled in the pan, was docked with a toothpick and placed in the steaming oven. The bake went well in the mini oven with Sylvia’s steam contained within. The loaf sprang another 1” in the oven which was unexpected for this bake.

When the loaf finished cooling, we wrapped the loaf in the parchment paper we use for tamales (much less quality and 1/3rd the price) instead of bread parchment. The parchment covered loaf was then wrapped in a towel for the 24 hour (or more if I can make it that long) wait to slice requirement. I’m shooting for 48 hours and a Sunday cut and taste. Haven’t ever made it that long before :-)

The formula follows the pix’s. Last night's sunset - 'red sky at night , sailor's delight' Was a good omen for a old sailor like me. This bread easily sliced 1/4" thick., had a nice open crumb, was very moist , very tasty and just plain delicious. toasted with butter it was sublime.........can't wait for lunch and pate! Enjoy the sunset. Lunch photos follw it.

The rye berries were ground to medium flour consistency in the Krups coffee grinder. The sprouts were started by soaking the rye berries for 3 hours and then sprouting them between layers of damp paper towels covered in plastic wrap and a kitchen towel. The sprouts were done in 20 hours, just in time for the mix.

My apprentice actually forgot to put them in and we had to de-pan, mix the forgotten sprouts in and then re-pan. Whew! I’m sure it didn’t hurt the dough any since it is not a dough but a grayish, tan paste that sticks to water and oil and anything else all at the same time – no problem.

The two levains were built separately over (2) 4 hour builds with an overnight 10 hour retard between the two to allow the sprouts to germinate. The flour, water, salt and 3 malts were incorporated and allowed to autolyse for 2 hours before the rye sour levain was added and mixed on KA 2 for 2 minutes and then allowed to rest and develop for 30 minutes.

The rye sour was behind the YW levain in doubling so it was allowed to catch up in the dough before the YW levain was added 30 minutes later and also mixed on KA 2 for 2 minutes. The seeds and prunes were added and mixed in. Then the sprouts were mixed in by hand.

The dough was allowed to ferment for 30 more minutes before being shaped with wet hands and placed in to a canola sprayed Pyrex loaf pan. The top was lightly sprinkled with bran.

The panned dough was allowed to proof for 90 minutes. When the bran on top had barely cracked the loaf was lightly docked and the pan was placed into the preheated 500 F mini oven with 2 of Sylvia’s steaming Pyrex cups in place. The temperature was turned down to 450 F after 2 minutes and the loaf was steamed for an additional 10 minutes.

At the 12 minute mark the temperature was turned down to 425 F and the loaf baked for another 10 minutes. At the 22 minute mark, the steam was removed and the temperature turned down to 375 F (convection this time) and baked for another 20 minutes, rotating the pan every10 minutes until the inside temperature reached 205 F.

The bread was cooled on wire racks, wrapped in parchment paper and the towel to rest for 24 - 48 hours before being cut.

they might have wine tasting, vinegar tasting, cheese tasting, beer tasting and olive oil tasting for the foodie. No reason not to have a rye or bread tasting for the breadies. I'm guessing the better tasting ones, with decent age on them would sell for more money :-)

green hair and cheese teeth inside this loaf :-) With it doubling in the proof and another inch in oven spring, it could have a totally blown off roof but it only proofed for 90 minutes so we keep our fingers crossed. We shall see.

Having pinched most of the recipe from you and Andy, the originality is questionable but we do like our sprouts, seeds and Chacon got me hooked on prunes in hearty breads. thought we would use bran instead of rye flour for the top this time. Thanks for the inspiration Juergen (and Andy too) and hopefully the YW didn't disappoint for an open moist crumb.

We are especially happy you like this bead - so far. Your compliments mean a lot to us, so thanks again. Can't wait to cut it open and have a taste.

but we all know there could be evil lurking inside :-) Keeping fingers crossed. Have never baked a rye like I would a regular bread with high heat and steam and then a slight temp reduction to finish in less than 40 minutes. Have always used a low and slow covered approach in the past. Well' see if my apprentice can make it for 48 hours :-)

Reading about all these incredible rye breads has been killing me while I was away. Now that I'm back, the first thing I see is your amazing looking bread! I anxiously await to read about the crumb shot and the taste. It sure looks and sounds close to perfect to me!

was a short trip for going so far mileage wise. Hope it went well. You missed my joke about your penchant for unusual bread ingredient combinations that I posted on Toad.de latest fine bake. It's my joke and I'm still laughing about it - not you of course. On to bread.

We have been wanting to test out the potential of YW on 100% rye bread hoping that it would provide a more open, if not better crumb, and some extra moistness, not that these breads are usually dry. Plus, we didn't want to lose the SD tang either. Juergen was the catalyst and the combo levain was the way to go. With the rise and spring we got I'm thinking the crumb should be as we wanted but rye breads are notorious for lying to you on the outside while disappointing you on the inside.

My assistant says that a 'committed doufus' like me just can't win in the long run when it comes to rye, women and avoiding prison but, what does she know after frying her brain in the sun for fun while covered in thick fur?

Only 24 hours to go till Sunday breakfast. Have been saving a half of the last pate we made with caramelized onion, carrot and egg just for this if it turns out OK. Will leave thepate in the freezer until the bread is cut to see if it is good enough for liver :-)

It looks like it was worth the wait for the crumb shot! What a perfect bread you have concocted. I have to wait a little bit before I can try something like this as I just refreshed my starters so I have to build up a rye starter first.

This is one of the best breads we have managed to date and the YW really opened up and lightened the crumb while making it even more moist. I don't have a knife good enough to cut it. But then, I see Breducation's Rugbrot he posted this morning a Chad Robertons take on Dainish Rye with Seeds and I realize that is varda's equal to the best rye bread I have ever seen. Now, after we make your Mocha Bread, it will have to be CR's Rugbrot. Chad Robertson's write up was also well worth reading that Breaducation linked to in his post.

Both levains were 100 % hydration at all times and both totaled 170 g after the 2nd build for a total of 340 g. The first YW build was 60 g each of flour and YW totaling 120 g and the first SD build was 20g rye starter, 50 g each water and starter totaling 120g. The 2nd SD build was 25 each of flour and water and so was the YW 25 g each of flour and water. You could build them together but for some reason I think it is better to keep them separate - just in case one gets out in front of the other like the YW did this time.

thanks for making that clearer. I want to give this one a try at some point in the future for sure.

My hands are permanently stained from pitting the cherries but hopefully it will be worth it. I ended up making this dough very hydrated since I made a mistake and didn't drain the chopped up cherries so it added a lot of un-accounted for cherry juice. Hopefully I have developed enough gluten to get a decent rise. I will post tomorrow the final result assuming it turns out okay. Could end up like a Ciabatta but that wouldn't be so bad worse case scenario.

Making a coffee soaker with rye berries and cracked wheat for the YW rye and grahm bread.

Cherry SD bread was a disaster...I tried to make it into a Ciabatta but it just became a pancake....it actually doesn't taste bad for a flat bread since the cheese tastes good! Will have to try this again and use the correct amount of liquid this time. I had a cherry puree and cherry pieces and water and the cherry juice from the pieces ended putting this over the top liquid wise. Hopefully the rye YW bread will come out better. With the way today has gone...2 new tires on my car...washing machine broke...new washing machine...disaster bread.....I've had the 3 disasters so I should be okay now :)

to come up with a new bread called Disaster Bread. It will have to have a dark side with some evilness lurking, unexpected twists and turns that make people feeling a little sick if they look at it too long - then we will have a hit. My apprentice already has some ideas.....

A funny thing with rye... One time I wrote that adding altus was like adding straw to the mud to make bricks. I erased it because I thought the comparison was killing my rye appetite and possibly others as well. However with sprouts, it really is like adding straw to the wet cement, mud like dough. Looks like it makes it lighter and stronger. I tend to get higher lifts with something supportive is in the dough, be it crumbs, seeds, shreaded anything. Instead of weighing it down, these particles seem to add to the matrix. Like fiberglass to plastic resin.

the altus sure helped the tastes and open crumb of Juergen's latest. This dough is just like a clay paste. Add some thing like sprouts and altus and you are adding straw to the clay bricks the Southwest is so famous for as a building material. I was really struggling with how much paste to make for my pan and then remembered a post about how to figure it that you had made and Andy had mentioned - but couldn't find it. Did run across your figuring how much rye sour, water and rye flour to use for a 100% rye paste though.

I'm with you when it comes to flavorful seeds in rye but am not as bold with them as you are. Have to learn to go bold. My 1 gram is a little pathetic and probably not worth mentioning in the formula. After I toasted them and ground them up a little in the mortar they seemed pretty strong. i was amazed that forgetting the sprouts and having to redo the loaf had little effect on the paste. I think it could survive a nuclear attack and ask - what happened? Apprentices ......

I think the loaf is too beautiful to cut till tomorrow morning. It sure smells good though the towel. Next time we will get some pumkin seeds or nuts in there somewhere - maybe on the outside. One of these days I'm going to do your many seeds and nuts little balls in a bundt pan loaf. Reminds me of my St Paddy's Day green and white soccor ball only with seeds.

Figuring the dough for the pan: Here's the easy method (a good place to start) that I wrote to Codruta:

Weight the pan empty, Fill full of water and weigh it. Subtract or use tare function to get volume water weight. Take half the weight for a dough that doubles. One third for a dough that triples... etc. Vollkorn hardly doubles but easily can if conditions are perfect. So plan for the positive.

She came out with 1860g water and used 1000g rye dough and came out with a lovely loaf.

Now I have to check to see how close We came since this bread did almost double in the pan say 80%. Came up with 1,382 g of water and since the dough was up 80% - should have used 1,000 g of dough. So the formula works well for this dough too. Thanks. This will most helpful if We ever get a Pullman pan.

What a wonderful bread for pate with lunch. Will post some lunch photos pretty soon. You will like the sprouts. The prunes were good too. The slight hint of aromatic seeds really caps it off subtley. Hanseata and mini would use 8 times as much. Did you see Breaducation's bake of Chad Robertson's 100% rye Rugbrot with a ton of seeds? What a great bread and another very nice 'Rye to Try.'

Follow The Fresh Loaf on:

All original site content copyright 2018 The Fresh Loaf unless stated otherwise. Content posted by community members is their own. The Fresh Loaf is not responsible for community member content. If you see anything inappropriate on the site or have any questions, contact me at floydm at thefreshloaf dot com. This site is powered by Drupal.